


The Presentation

by LuxLox



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Homelessness, M/M, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2019-07-15 07:51:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16058759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuxLox/pseuds/LuxLox
Summary: Arthur, a seventeen year old misfit, finds solace from his breaking and dysfunctional home life when he meets seventeen year old Alfred, a homeless boy who spends his days smoking, living and sleeping on the steps of Saint Paul's Cathedral.When Arthur decides to base a presentation on Alfred for his Sociology homework, he discovers that Alfred leads a more complicated life than he ever could have imagined -- and he can't avoid getting mixed up in it.





	1. Chapter 1

I hated giving presentations. I really, really hated it. I knew something would go wrong, and even if it didn’t, I’ll think it did. And I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it till it made me feel my downright worst, and then, once the punishment of being me has taken enough of it’s toll - it might lighten up. It might. But the weight of it’s ghost never will. It’ll re-appear when I’m eating, when I’m revising, when I’m learning, when I’m walking, when I’m in the shower, when I’m about to fall asleep, and worst of all and what acts as the chains that ties all these actions together - when I’m alone. And that can be hard, especially for someone who’s always alone. Like me.

Now, that’s not to say I didn’t have people around me. There was always people at school. But I came to learn that it’s not the act of being a person that makes people be people, but rather the act of being a person to someone else. To me. And nobody ever acted like a person to me. I suppose that’s because I wasn’t a person to them. They called me - the people at my school - they called me all sorts of things, things they didn’t call other people. Like weirdo. Like idiot. And one that’s not like anything, because it was made specially for me - Wank-hand Kirkland. It rhymed a little bit. Hurt a lot. Made no sense at all, though. I think that's what made it sting me so much. I just didn’t know why they would do it. 

But I knew this, okay? I knew that I was a weirdo. I knew I did weird stuff, and I knew it was my fault. But I didn’t mean to. I never wanted to be like this, I never wanted to act the way I did. It was just hard for me, because I didn’t know how to act any other way. I never fitted in, and I never will. I’ve always been looking at what life should be like through a reinforced, and invisible window. And there was no door to the other side of that window, and I know that, and I should’ve just given up trying to find one because I never would’ve. I’ll always have been like this, and I’ll always have hated giving presentations. And --

It was my turn.

“Arthur?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Homework? You ready?”

“Huh? Yeah, I’ve done it.” I lied.

“Ok. But are you ready?”

A snigger travelled round the classroom in one long hiss. I’ve stopped trying to find out why by this point.

“It’s at home.”

The teacher, Mr Bonnefoy, sighed. Crossed his legs in a tired way. “Again?”

“Yeah.”

“Arthur, this really isn’t good enough.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn't. I didn’t have enough breath to. I hated talking out loud, just in case. Just in case they laughed again.

“I need it in by next lesson. Next lesson after half-term, that is. Tuesday after I think.”

I think my forehead was on the the table now, because I remember noticing my laces were undone. Why did I always leave my fucking laces undone? Seventeen fucking years old, one-hundred and sixty fucking IQ and I couldn’t even figure out how to tie my own fucking laces properly. 

“Arthur, you need to look at me when I speak to you. Okay?” He was always kind. Mr bonnefoy. Always kind. Always patient. I had wished everyone was like him, then maybe my head wouldn’t be on the table. But it was, and everyone was laughing quietly again. I lifted my face up, but my eyes stayed where they were.

“Next week. Do you know what it’s on? It’s on Societal Problems. Okay? You understand? Okay. Next week, Alright? Make sure.” he insisted, and then class was over, and we were all dismissed to take our final registration in form. I didn’t go, I didn’t have to anymore. They gave me a card that let me skip it. I think that was after the fifth time I came out crying. The card also got me early lunch, which I would take, but I wouldn’t eat it anymore. I’d take it home for dinner. Mum didn’t cook anymore, see.

My mum wasn’t a happy person. And not in the way that she would actually act sad, like moping around the house and crying all the time, but more that I shouldn’t have been able to notice, because I never saw much of her. She didn’t come out of her room much after the accident (that’s what we’d call it, if we ended up calling it anything.) So that’s how I knew she was sad. Dad was sad too, but he’d do it secretly - like crying in the bathroom. He did that a lot. And going for long walks by himself, one’s that he’d come back all red nosed and puffy eyed from , even in the summertime, when he couldn’t use the frosty air as an excuse for his bright colour change. It also meant that he wasn’t very good at shopping. I think… well, I think he tried to cheer me up by buying sweets and easy to get-at-food like cereals, but it didn’t help. And I just always felt bloated and sick by the time it came to dinner, so much so that I’d eat one of the endless supply of ‘terry’s chocolate oranges’ just to make myself feel like I’d eaten something healthy. So yeah, they weren’t happy people.

I tried to be, though. Happy, that is. I’d find things that’d made me happy, and I’d do them. Only thing was, I didn’t know what would make me happy. I’d tried all the usual things - drawing, writing, singing, sports, watching youtube, listening to music - but in the end, they’d all make me tired and lonely and like I was acting too… too normal. And for some stupid reason, I just couldn’t act normal without thinking about it all the time. It was like I actually cared about being myself, about making sure I wasn’t going to find happiness and then realise it wasn’t happiness at all, but instead just me managing to fit in. And something stupid like, fitting in in the wrong place, really scared me. So, I’d go and be weird. Really weird. Like how I liked to watch people. Strangers, to be precise. 

There’s something about strangers that gave me hope. The way there was so many of them, doing so many different whatever's in so many different places with so many different things on their mind. I really, really liked it. All the different people and all the different things they did made me feel like maybe, somewhere out in that buffering and zigzagging cross-stitch of London, there was someone for me. And not in that poetic, red-string-tied-around-your-fingers romantic sort of way, I don’t mean it like that at all. I just mean someone I would fit with, and that would fit with me. And maybe someone who could teach me how to keep my shoelaces from coming undone.

When I got home, mum was nowhere to be seen, but I had come to expect it so much now that I hardly noticed the emptiness anymore. What did bother me however, was dad’s absence. He worked from home, so he was always there to greet me with a badly made cup of tea and a rhetorical ‘how was your day?’ But today, no one. I called out, hoping by some wishful strand of a faint memory that mum may come rushing down to me to greet me, but still, no one. 

That was alright. I was used to no one.

Determined to enjoy my week, I put no thought into the empty house and made myself the first cup of tea of the holiday, and then started to plan my weekly trip up to London. To watch the people. 

Epping station. That’s where I live, just up the hill and round the corner from Epping station, where I would start all my journeys. First, I’d get together my phone and earphones, maybe a bag too if I felt like bringing some money with me, then I make sure to tell dad I was going out with some mates. He never asked for any names or details, and his detached interest - whether intentional or not - made what I was doing so easy, so-much-so that I would have suited being one of those teens who snuck out to parties, smoke, drank, maybe even did drugs. But no. I just liked to be alone in London, and watch people.

After I’d leave my house with no hindrance, I’d embark towards the station, which sat just past a pop of urban town life, a few parks, and small church with a green and two benches in front. I’d never sit there, even though I thought it looked rather welcoming and quaint. There were just too many people I knew, and too many people who knew me, and how can I be myself around people who are going to know me? That’s why I like strangers. Because they strip away that ironically anxious repetition, and leave just the bare inner-workings of themselves on display, never to be seen again. I like that. I can understand that.

I’d reach the station, always out of breath because the hill downways to it was listlessly bumpy, and I’d have to climb over the shrubbed shadows of where the beginning of a forest once was in order to have a relatively peaceful trip. Once I’d get through the gates, I’d grab a coke and say hi to the guy that ran the tuck shop, Amir. He’d always ask me where I was going in that thick accent of his, and I’d always answer the same thing. “Just out.” I’d say. Because it was just out, or more like just in, just in the very edges of central London. So now with my coke and my topped up oyster, I’d board a western-bound train to Saint Paul’s station, and that’s where I’d get off (my coke would be finished by now, so I’d have to go the long way round the winding underground tunnels to reach a bin on my way out, this would mean I would come out on the opposite side of the station, and quite far away from the Cathedral at which it took its name-sake. However, today, I didn’t.

Maybe it was just the fact I was irked at no one being home, and had now put myself in a needless rush to get out— but I didn’t grab my coke, even though I was rather thirsty and worn out. I didn’t say hi to Amir, even though I could see him struggling from behind his tuck shop counter to grab my attention. And when I got to Saint Paul’s, I didn’t have to go the long way round, so, I didn’t. And that decision changed my life. Because coming out on the Cathedral side of the station, meant I would be able to see the usual under-life that wrapped itself around the churches big, white steps . And one of the members of that under-life, was Alfred. But I wouldn’t know his name till at least the day after.

Alfred was a stoically built boy, but I couldn’t tell when I first met him. He was hidden under so many layers of tattered coat and threadbare scarf that it would have been impossible for me to weigh him up just by sight. His hair, too, was hidden under a large knitted hat, that clung to his skull through the bare frost that was beginning to tape itself at the tips of his red ears. He’d sniffle every few sentences, and cough every other, rubbing his retrousse nose sore till his nostrils and chapped lips could hardly be told apart in colour. The voice that came from those lips was grainy and like a tarmac floor, but not as though it had grown rough with age or health, but more that he was talking through a whisper, as though he was afraid of raising his voice. Or maybe it was just the cold air, I wouldn’t have been able to tell. But I could hear there was something in it, something small, that could be, and wanted to be, big. And I’d know, because I’d heard him before I’d seen him. Twice.

“Got a smoke?” 

I was standing at the very tipped-edge of the stations staircase, gazing out at the frosted glass mist that was today’s London, and the blue covered buildings peaking out beyond it. I didn’t answer at first, thinking it couldn’t possibly be a question for me. I looked young, and I always had looked young. People wouldn’t even approach me to do a survey on the street, let alone ask my if I had any cigarettes. I carried on staring off, slightly put out by the voice out of nowhere. It came again, and this time attached to a hand that was now prodding my shoulder.

“‘Scuse me? Said, you got a smoke?”

“Me?” I’d asked, because even a prodding hand wasn’t enough to make me believe that the question was directed at my slim-shouldered, five-foot eleven self. 

“Yeah. Who else would I mean? I’m poking you, ain't I?”

“Yeah, uhm, I suppose you are… hello.”

“Yeah, hi? Just wanted to know if you got a smoke. Do ya?”

“Oh yeah. No. No, I don’t do that. Don’t smoke.”

“Oh.” He said, and then blew air into his bare hands, pushing them together and looking me up and down with cold blue eyes that matched the frost slowly gathering around us. “Guess you don’t, then.” And then he’d shrugged, and walked off to a man in a farmers hat standing near-by me. I’d almost left at this point, unnerved now that one of the strangers that I’d come to watch and not talk to, had spoken to me. And not in a pretentious way, as though I thought I was too good for him to be speaking to me, but rather the other way round. I wasn’t a good person to talk to. In fact, I thought I was a terrible person to talk to. That’s why I just looked, because that was as close as I’d get to feeling like I was being normal with other normal people, but without the reminder that I was trying. But I’d been spoken to, by a boy that looked about my age. And it had almost made me want to run away, almost. But it was enough to serve as a reminder that I wasn’t normal. That I was weird, acting as if I was normal. I suddenly felt terrible.

“Your laces are undone.” Alfred appeared beside me again, his hand fiddling with something in his puffer pocket.

“What?”

“Said, your laces are undone, bud.”

“Wait, American?”

“Yeah. You gonna do ‘em up then? Your laces?”

“Oh, uh, shit. Yeah. Yeah, I’m gonna, sorry.”

I bent down onto one knee, hesitating slightly when I noticed he now had the white tip of a cigarette hanging from his mouth. What was he doing back with me? He’d got what he wanted.

“What you apologising for, bud?”

“Huh? Me? Oh, Nothing. Sorry. Oh, shit. Uhm…” I began to tie my stupid laces up, but my hands were shaking so much that I could hardly thread the loops together.

“Hah. You’re funny. I’m like that, too. Apologising for shit that I shouldn’t be.” He chewed on his unlit cigarette. “So, how old are you?”

“Me?”

“Yea. Like, who else? I was talking to you from the start and I’m still talking to you now. Just to clarify, so you can stop asking. Kay?”

“O… uh… okay. Yeah… uhm, I’m seventeen.”

“Oh shit, really? Same.”

“Yeah?”

“Ahuh.” 

It suddenly occurred to me just how young he actually did look. A round face, hollowed out by winter thinness, that had made his jaw and cheekbones rather sharp and dark. His brow bone too, but his eyes were so alight and bright that the shadow around them was hardly noticeable. Outshone, if you will. His clothes stood out to me as well, not that I noticed anything more than I had at first glance before, but more that it occurred to me just how different they were to mine. My school uniform, that is. My curiosity peaked.

“What school do you go to?” I asked, not looking up at him. He answered at length. 

“I don’t.” His voice bounced off somewhere else, fading out and into the general brass hum of the city, as though he was looking away. “I dropped out, didn’t I.”

“Oh.”

“What about you?”

“Saint Albans sixthform.” I said, warily. I knew better than to give my school out to total strangers (and especially cigarette-asking young American boys hanging around central London) but for some reason, maybe it was the pure interest in his voice, I felt I owed him the actual answer.

“Oh. Never heard of it.”

“It’s a big one.”

“Yeah? Makes it even worse that I’ve never heard of it, then.”

“Well,” I said, the ego I didn’t know I had was unusually hurt, “not that big. A couple hundred students.”

“And you’re one of them?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it near here?”

“Uh, no. Not really. Not at all.”

“Oh, well, that’ll be why I haven’t heard of it, then, stupid. How can you expect me to have heard of something I’m not even near?”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Stop apologising.” 

A plume of smoke blew down in my face as I began to stand up again, He had finally lit his cigarette, much to the dismay of my unbeaten lungs. 

“Sorry ‘bout that. Wind.” He said, not looking sorry at all.

“So— uhm… so, uh, never heard of my school? you not travel much?”

He perked up at this, rolling back on the heels of his beaten trainers and plucking the cigarette from his lips, I supposed so he could answer more clearly.

“Nah. Don’t have no need to. Everything I need’s right here, on these steps.”

“what, Saint Paul’s?”

“You bet.”

“But… you’re not meant to stay on the stairs. There’s a sign, I think.”

He grinned, showing a missing canine.

“Ahh, boo hoo. Who gives a shit? Everyone else and their mum does. Look.” And his arm stretched out to pull back an invisible curtain, presenting a smiling Chinese dad and his two children, wrapped up in more layers than Alfred, stretched out on the top step and grinning as wide as they could for a photo. “He’s come here every day for a week. This is the first time he’s brought his kids, though. Look’it them. Stretched out on the sacred stairs like absolute maniacs.” He stopped to laugh, and then seemed to lose track of what he was saying, resorting to just suck the literal cancer out of the cigarette. 

“I was just saying about a sign, wasn’t uhm like, telling you off or anything…”

“Ah. I’m only messing. Just annoys me, you know? Yeah. Like, how they even chase us off the church steps. Just annoys the daylights outta me.”

“Us…?”

“Yeah, us. The homeless. Those without a home, vagrants, vagabonds—“ He threw his cigarette butt behind him with a sharp twist of his shoulder, “—the scum of society. You might’ve heard of us.”

“You’re homeless?” This is what I mean when I say I was weird. Any normal person would have kept quiet then, would’ve felt awkward and out of place, maybe changing the subject and hoping for a quick escape. But not me, not wank-hand Kirkland. I had to be weird, to ask like a brainless mong.

But he laughed. And not _at_ me.

“Yeah. How many other ways could I say it? The uhh… oh what do they say… _sans-abri._ That’s how they say it in France. Probably with a better accent, though.”

“I’d hope so. Since they’re French and all.”

He laughed again, and something happy and sleeping in me started to feel light and awake.

“So, What you doing out here alone? Meeting up with someone? Taking pictures for art homework? Don’t tell me you’ve come to go to church. It’s not even Sunday.”

“No, no. I uh…” _came to stare at people because it makes me feel like I fit in, “_ Yeah, homework and stuff. Not uh, not art though. It’s for sociology.”

“Ohh… you wanna be a gynecologist then?”

“Uhhm, a what?”

“You know, a gynecologist, someone that, like, looks into brain science and how like all our thoughts work. You know? Don’t you need sociology for that?”

I couldn’t hold back the laughter. 

“You mean a psychologist?”

“Yeah, shit, what’d I say?”

“Gynechologist.”

“Uh… not the same thing then?”

“Nowhere near.”

“Sure?”

“Positive.”

“Ah, well, I don’t go to no fancy-smancy school like yours where they teach soci— soci.. uhm. Sociology. That’s it.”

“That’s alright.”

“I probably would have taken it, though. I’f I’d ended up carrying on.”

“Really? Because you didn’t even remember the na-“

“No. I’m just saying shit so you don’t feel like a nerd.”

“That’s… thoughtful of you.”

“I know right? Nah. I would have taken, ahh, who knows. Gym? Could you take that?”

“What? PE? Probably, in different schools. Not mine, though. Not for A-level.”

“Well, that’s why I dropped out see. Weren’t good at nothing but running around and throwing a ball. And not even a ball that would get me somewhere, like what you call rugby balls. Could’ve got a scholarship with that. Nah, I was only really good at throwing tennis balls.” Although he was still smiling, there was something fallen about his face. His eyes were deeper, not as bright. He looked down, treading on an already trod-on cigarette.

“What about an umpire? You could have tried that.”

“What’s that?”

“Like, it’s like the kids that stand off to the side in tennis matches. And they run and catch the balls that go too far off and stuff. They have to be good at throwing a tennis ball.”

There was a moment of silence, or as silent as it could get in a buzzing cities afternoon, and then Alfred was looking up again, smiling, differently now. His cheeks were less round, and his dimples less noticeable. It was a soft smile, a genuine smile on a face that hadn’t had one for some time. Then it was gone.

“Yeah, well, if only you could’ve told my dad that back then. He thought all that ball throwing shit was stupid. And I guess it kinda is, ‘cos look’it me now—“

“Oh crap. My dad.”

“Huh?”

“My dad, shit. He doesn’t know I’m out. He’s probably worried to hell and back. I gotta—“

“You gotta go. Yeah, alright.” Alfred shrugged, his shoulders sitting low and awkwardly forward, he looked away from me. “See ya, then.”

“Sorry, Yeah—“

“Don’t keep apologising. Ain’t nothing. See ya.”

“—bye, I uh… will you be here tomorrow?”

“I’ll say the same as what I would have said the last 2 years passed. I’m always here, and I always will be.”

“Okay, well, maybe I’ll come… I mean, I might come back.”

“Must be a lot of homework.”

“I might.”

“Alright. See ya.” And he was walking off, feet barely detaching from the floor, so that he slipped off almost ghost like into the surrounding mist. I hadn’t even time to decipher the tone of his voice before there was a familiar and far off screech underground, one that meant my train had probably arrived. I took off, Nameless-Alfred still playing as a cigarette smoked, smiling image in my mind.

When I got home, I was met blindly by two big arms grabbing me tightly and pulling me forward, the door swinging shut loudly without my coaxing. Then once I had been thoroughly squeezed breathless, I was pushed away hard enough to stumble, but kept from that ultimate fate by grasping hands on my fore-arms. In the space of four seconds, my sight had managed to blur, my head begin to spin, and my arms knotted against each other awkwardly to balance.

Dad’s face came into focus, green eyes wide, thin mouth strangled and tighter than usual.

“Arthur! Arthur, what the hell, Arthur? The hell? Why didn’t you answer my calls? Why’re you so late? You see how late the time is?! What happened to you? Are you-- are you alright? Oh, the hell, Arthur?”

“I’m fine!”

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing. Why d’you care so much, dad? Leave off.” I tried to pull away, but his hands were carved into my skin.

“The hell? Why do I care?!” the worry turned to anger, and he gripped me tighter, large forehead going red, lattice like veins branching in from his greying hairline. “I care, Arthur, because you’re my son! My boy, for goodness sake! Why do I care… you hear yourself? Goodness me...”

“Well, well you don’t normally care when I go out! Why all the sudden? And you’re hurting me.”

Nothing about him seemed to acknowledge my protests, except that his grip loosened, and his breath slowed down. He sighed. Gave up in front of me.

“Because you need to tell me, Arthur… when you’re going out. Something could’ve happened to you after school. _At_ school, even—“

I snatched myself away from him, knowing exactly what he meant. And I hated it.

“Yeah! Alright! I went to London— no big deal.”

“No big— Stop walking right now, Arthur. Right now.”

I did. But I didn’t turn around.

“Anything can happen in London. Anything. And how do you… how do you think that’d make me feel? Or mum.”

“Mum? How’d it make _mum_ feel? Know what? Don’t think she does anymore, dad. Don’t think she can feel. Because she obviously doesn’t care. You have to care to feel.”

“Don’t you dare—“

“When was the last time she spoke more than, what, like, three words to you?”

“Arthur, you shut up. You shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Atleast I do talk—“

A hand was holding me again, so sharp and tight that it almost felt as though a rope was cutting into it. Then the pressure released, and I looked down to see four white and bloodless finger marks fading from my arm. It hurt. 

The air was hot and stuffy and so thick that I could hardly raise my head, let alone breathe. But dad’s breath was heavy enough for the both of us, and he stood panting behind me for a while, till it blended into background noise and the air cleared. I think if I’d turned round at that moment, then I might have caught the sight of his braced hand dropping from the air.

“I— I don’t want you going up to London anymore, Arthur. Not on your own.”

“What?!” It had come so out of nowhere - or atleast what felt like it - that I had to swing round just to check he was being serious. Every little thing about his face, from his furrowed brow to his linear mouth, screamed that he was. “You can’t!”

“You’re not going anymore.”

“Dad! You can’t! I — I need to go! You can’t stop me.”

“You’re not going and that’s final—“

A picture of Alfred flashed in my head. A mystery that I had to solve. That I had to see again.

“Homework, though, dad! It’s for homework! I have to!”

“Oh-h-h hell, Arthur, don’t give me that bollocks.”

“No! It really is! For sociology. Even ask Mr Bonnefoy. I have to. I have to go!”

“Why would sociology need you to go up to London?”

“Because— because the homework… the—“ I could feel myself becoming breathless. What was the homework. What _was_ the homewo— “society. That’s it. Society, and its problems. And I have to do it on the homeless.” 

He was quiet. So quiet that I had wondered if my reply had actually happened anywhere but inside my head. But then he spoke, and it was with a calmness and a regret that I had never seen in him before. His hopelessness, however, had become his defining trait.

His head hung low, and his voice shivered and broke once it left his lips, as though he was mumbling only to himself.

“Of course. I’m sorry, Arthur… I’m sorry I shouted… I’m sorry… you’re a good boy Arthur. You’re too good… a good lad. I was just… you can go to London. I’m sorry I’m such a bad dad. I’m sorry—“

I started to run. Run upstairs and into my room. Because this was so much worse than the shouting and the grabbing. He was breaking. My dad was splitting at the seams because my mother was too disintegrated to hold him together anymore, and I couldn’t do Fanny Adams all about it. Absolutely nothing. And when my dad had finally burst apart, I’d have no one. Not that my dad could be much of someone to me anymore, but at least he treated me like something. Like a person. It was my glue. And no one else did that. No one. Just no—

But Alfred.

The boy who - at that fragile moment in time - I hadn’t even known the name of. 

He had become my new glue. 


	2. Snap

“So you came back, huh?”

The afternoon air was defrosting, the sun shard icicles began to slip away into something soft, warm, dripping and dark. It was the beginning of the evening, the first day of my half term, and the first day I’d be working on — what I’d come to label over the following week — as just ‘The Presentation.’ 

It was the orange glow of London that gave me my first idea - The black topped spirals of old buildings with the blurred and boxed in silhouettes of new ones, against a sky that resembled the dappled bank of some autumn covered and far away African savannah. It was the London that had inspired the curious eye of so many, like it did with Alfred, and would inspire many more to come, like it would with me. 

But my inspiration wasn’t only London’s glimmer, but Alfred and his own glimmer. The way he would sit when he talked - legs splayed out in front of himself and ready to pull in and run away, arms rigid and tight by his sides, so bent and closed in that they were almost crossed. The way his head leant against his chest when he relaxed, and how his hair bounced in the lowering sunlight, so that it would look almost like glowing cashmere wool. It was in these things, and in him, that had made me feel that picture taking would be so necessary - after all, how could I properly illustrate any sort of story or suffering if I only had a faceless sufferer? No. I needed photos, and I knew how I wanted them and how I wanted to get them. It was just the asking that scared me. I’d been waiting for at least two hours by now, waiting for nothing more then that stirring feeling in my stomach to go away, and for my mouth to cooperate with what my head wanted it to say. But every time I’d look at him, look at the way his eyes would veer away from mine, how his eyebrows would crease and then raise like the billowing end of a ribbon as he’d abruptly pause a sentence mid flow, and finally, how his mouth (which had failed to even tell me his name at this point,) would open only very slightly when he was thinking, and close softly just before he’d speak. I’d use the word confused, to talk about him. Everything - from his scarfed neck to his threadbare jogging bottoms - would make me feel confused. And so I couldn’t ask for the pictures, not just yet anyway. I was confused. 

“Arthur?”

I closed my mouth, Embarrassed. He must have noticed I wasn’t entirely listening. I could see it in the dip of his face. 

“You hear me?”

“Uh, no. Sorry.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I was just thinking ‘bout how you actually uh… came back, then.”

“ I had to, it’s for homework.” As it left my mouth I could feel, from that ashamed and deep feeling, that it was the wrong thing to say. Usually, I was so used to never saying the right thing that it had desensitised me to the wrong thing. But for some reason, doing what I always did but with Alfred, made me feel — guilty. As though I owed him some sense of normality, one that I unfortunately hadn’t properly learnt how to use yet. 

I could feel a stammer begin to prepare itself, and I swallowed up some defensive noises in an attempt to apologise. But as I had noticed with Alfred, he’d already expected the worst, and so I didn’t think my reply had actually affected him at all. He looked away, then back again. He was staring at my lap, or maybe his.

“Yeah, ‘bout that. I’m curious. What d’you actually gotta do for it? Like — what, then? Why you gotta see me to do your homework, huh?”

“Well, I’ve got to… I gotta… it’s for sociology—“

“Don’t start telling me what you’ve already told me. Tell me specifically. Why me?”

“‘Cos… ‘cos it’s on the homeless. I have to… uhm… yeah.”

Something about him changed, and he leant forward intently, hands clasped in his lap. 

“Oh yeah? What about us?”

“Just like… what it’s like to be it and… yeah, stuff like that I s’pose.” I suddenly felt very embarrassed - ashamed - almost. I was creating a distinction, one that before I hadn’t even properly thought about in more complicated terms than labels. But the longer he stared at me, and the longer I felt that cold bottom slab of a stone staircase under me, the more pushed out and edging-on-the-outside I felt. 

“What do — you gonna interview me then?”

“Probably, Yeah. Uhm, later on, though. I haven’t got to that point yet.”

“Good. I got some stories to tell. You gonna make a log of me?”

“What? What’s _alogimi?”_

“You know- like a… a diary log of my everyday actions?”

“Oh! A log of you... Uhm, maybe, I don’t quite know exactly everything I’m going to do. Not quite yet, anyway.”

“What else d’you think you’ll need?”

This was the time. I needed to ask now. But I was so nervous. Why was I so nervous?

“Well actually… actually I was thinking—“ I pulled my phone out my pocket, swiping onto the camera so hopefully he’d notice and I wouldn’t have to ask. I really didn’t want to ask. Just in case. Just in case he thought I was a complete weirdo.

He didn’t say anything.

“Maybe I can… maybe we can start with photos?” 

Shit.

Shit, why am I always weird? Why do I always have to go and ruin everything? That’s such a weird thing to ask, why would I ask that?

When he replied, it was quiet and thoughtful. 

“ _My…_ photo? Like — pictures of me? With me in them?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s okay if you don’t want to—“

“An actual photo shoot?”

“Well, kind of?”

“That’s so cool! Really cool! And you’re being real with me? You’re not like… pranking me?”

I frowned. “Euh? Pranking you? Of course not. Why would I—“

His voice slipped out in front of mine, oddly fast. “No reason. Come on, then. Let’s take some photos — where should I stand?”

I felt like there was a weight off my chest, which was a silly thing to feel, but nonetheless I hadn’t been so pleased with myself in a while. I felt normal.

“I was kind of actually thinking that maybe… hmm… try sitting here — just here — perfect. Yeah. And maybe… move your hand a little away from your face and… nice, okay!”

“I feel like I’m getting my picture taken for vogue or something.”

“Oh, yeah?” I said with half-thought, snapping two pictures quickly. I didn’t bother looking at them. I didn’t need to, I was planning on taking a lot, enough that there’d be at least one I was happy with. Plus, I couldn’t help but not want to take my eyes off him. There was something about him and the evening light that mixed so perfectly, that I felt it couldn’t last for long. I had to savour it. And quickly.

_Snap._

“So, you good at taking pictures, then?” He asked.

“I s’pose we’ll see. Don’t take a lot, so, don’t know really.”

_Snap. Snap._

“I loved pictures.”

“Oh yeah? — move your head a little — perfect.”

“Yeah. When I was little, like — I don’t know — about ten years old, dad bought me this disposable camera thing. It’d, like, take pictures and stuff, but you’d have to get them developed at a chemists. You know?”

“Oh, yeah, I remember those. Yeah. I never had one though, but my brother did.”

“They were cool, huh — my leg’s going dead like this —“

“That’s alright. You can move it.”

“Cool.” He swivelled himself, leaning his elbow against the stair above his head so that his coat-padded body looked like a broken twig. There was a butterfly shaped scar on his ankle.

“So yeah, anyway. I’d use that thing, like, just all the time. Taking pictures of everything. The dog, the outside, my mom — yeah, sort of everything. And one day, it was like sunny and really hot I remember, I had about three photos left on it. I wanted to make them really special, you know, to round off everything perfectly. But for the life of me I just couldn’t decide what I wanted them to be of. ‘Member thinking… can’t do the dog, what if she moves when I try taking it and it’s all ruined? And then, my mom, I can’t do her because she hasn’t got any makeup on today so… so she won’t let me take any photos. The outside wasn’t special enough, and I didn’t take photos of my dad—“

“Hey? Hey mate? can you look back up from the floor again? Sorry— it just looks bet—“

“No problem.” 

His eyes moved like they were attached to heavy weights. When he didn’t start talking again, I prodded him on, more intent on letting him know I was listening, rather than actually focusing on what he was saying. I wish I had. I really wish I’d just listened.

“Yeah… yeah, so, uhm — I had this friend back then, I guess I would’ve called him my best friend. If that’s what you call them anyway... yeah, so, he was about fifteen. I thought he’d know what to do, so, I sort of asked him. Just for some advice, you know? He said, well I mean, he smiled and he was like — ‘ _have you taken any of yourself?’”_

His eyes had dropped again, I didn’t bother asking him to look up like I did before. I decided the photos looking good didn’t matter, it was better to capture any truth there was. I made sure to get his scarred ankle in frame. 

“And I said,” he continued, eyes looking so far down I had wondered if they were really looking at anything at all. “I said, ‘ _no, I can’t take photos of myself.’ ‘Why?’_ He said. _‘Because I can’t see what I’m taking.’_ I told him, I didn’t want to waste it, see? ‘ _I’ll take them for you,’_ he said. ‘ _You will?’_ I remember thinking, wow, that’s so nice of him to offer. He must be so busy, being so old and stuff, but he’s offering to help me. How nice. He was all like _‘Sure thing. But on one condition.’ ‘What’s that?’_ I said, absolutely sure I’d accept anything. _‘I get to decide how you look in them.’_ I told him to make sure I didn’t look fat. He told me he wouldn’t, as long as I didn’t tell anybody.”

_Snap. Snapsnapsnap. Snap._

_“_ So, so he had this shed, right? It was like this storage block sort of thing, made out of concrete. Ugly-looking. They kept their guns in there, there were always so many. I remember I used to think that if there were, like, a zombie apocalypse? Well, we’d be absolutely fine for protection. I can’t even describe how many, there must have been a point where it got illegal. Not that they would have cared, but, y’know… uhm...where was I…”

“That pose — with your arms around your chest like that? That looks good. Can you hold that for a little bit?”

“Oh— sure thing.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt. Carry on.” 

“Yeah, So—“ he moved his arms tensely and awkwardly, as though just realising they were there, then jaggedly he seemed to remember my instruction and held them in place. “So, I gave him my camera and he took me into this shed of his. It was real cold. And, uhm, next to this big black shotgun thing, there was a little wooden work bench with bullet holes and dried red paint all over it. He sat me down on that, and I said cheese and sort of waited for him to take the photo — but he didn’t. He just sat watching me, eyes all scrunched up and mouth bent like a bitten apple. _‘Don’t you remember what I said?’_ He asked me, I asked him which part, he said _‘my condition.’_ I said sorry, said I forgot — but I hadn’t, I just didn’t understand. I can see that now. He told me to give him time to think, asked me how many photos I had left exactly, I told him. Three. Next thing I remember— he told me to take off my shirt.”

_Snap._

“I did. Then he, he said ‘ _how_ ‘ _bout your pants?’_ I said _‘what about them?’_ Cos, if only I’d known… If only... And he said _‘go on. Take them off. Take them off or I won’t take the photo.’_ So I took them off. And then he said—“

“Hey, can you try sitting up? I don’t know, I think it’d be—“ 

If only I’d been listening. One hundred and sixty IQ and I still couldn’t properly fucking listen. 

He sat up straight, and then stood up even straighter, his head almost at a right angle from his body, looking down at his trainers. “I don’t think I want to take anymore pictures, please. I think I’m done — can you put your phone down? I said I’m done.”

“What— why?”

“Don’t like pictures. Okay? I’m not good with pictures. Leave it. Alright? I’m done.”

“Did I— was it me?”

His arms were wrapped around him closely, leg bouncing tightly under his weight. He looked up at me, really looked at me. I could feel everywhere his eyes went, every erratic glance up and down - and more piercingly - every time he would suddenly look away. Then after a minute of him staring while I disjointedly hid my phone away, he shook his head with a hand rubbing at his eye and said breathlessly “I gotta be off.”

“What? Why? Listen, Alfred, I’m sorry if—“

“I’m off.” He said again, and I almost felt sick. Couldn’t he hear I was saying sorry? 

This is what would always happen. With anyone. They’d start acting funny all of the sudden, and I wouldn’t know what had happened, what I’d done. I’d usually see it coming; in the way their eyes would roll around and glance somewhere else, reaching for another’s gaze. And their mouth would sutchur down, smile tightly and fold along itself so that it looked like a single stitch in their face. A stitch that was locking away laughter at the expense of myself. That would be how it’d go. But Alfred’s change had been so sudden that I hadn’t actually noticed it was the same thing happening, till his back was already a good 7 foot away from me, and walking further. 

“Wait— wait, Alfred?”

He stopped. Or paused, more like. His body like a cog caught on a latch, ready to spring away and escape.

“Was it me?” I asked him. I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I wasn’t sure what had happened. I was confused. Why did he always make me feel confused?

“I just don’t like photos.” And the cog unlatched and he was off again, walking away just as his yesterday shadow had as well. Once the butterfly scar on his ankle had completely disappeared into the crowd of other passing ankles, I also left. 

The journey home felt like a heavy wet jacket.

***

“What’s for tea?” I asked dad. His response was to stroke a red hand over his long chin, and shove his other hand elbow deep into one of the kitchen cupboards, shuffling it’s contents around.

“Yeah, uhm… custard creams? And uhm…” something crunched from the empty insides. “Ready salted crisps?” He pulled out said menu items, and jostled them in front of my face as though I had a choice.

I bashed them away irritatedly, “I don’t see why we can’t just get a takeaway.” 

His voice was hard, unmoving but tired. “You know why. You’re mother doesn’t like strangers coming near the house.”

“Well, that’s a stupid reason. She doesn’t even eat with us anyway.”

“I know, Arthur. I know. But that’s just how it is.” He set two small plates out, starting to fill them up with biscuits and crisps. 

“Why?”

“We need to think of your mother.”

“But why? Why is everything always about mum?”

“She’s going through a lot. You know that, Arthur. You know that.”

My plate was done, it made me feel sick to look at.

“So? So? Why does that mean she has to put us through it too? It’s your son as well. It’s my brother. Why does she get all the special treatment?”

Dad’s fist was clenched red. He breathed heavily, and when it opened, a crumbled biscuit fell out of it.

“It’s not that simple. You know that.”

“It is. It is, but you just won’t admit it.”

“You don’t know the whole story, Arthur.”

“Tell me, then.”

“I can’t- it’s better if you don’t know.”

“If this is what better is, then… then I might as well not be here.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not? Why not? You obviously don’t care. You don’t even care enough to tell me what happened to my own—“

“Don’t you dare say that. I care. You know I care. I care about you more than anything.”

“Then tell me what happened.”

“I can’t—“

“Tell me! Tell me! Tellmetellmetellme—“

He was on edge. I could feel it. But I pushed. I pushed because I never got to push, because I was always pulling. There was a limited amount of sense and calmness in my dad tonight, and I was sick of never seeing it. Sick of my ‘normal’ being taken away from me, because I was the only one that seemed to be able to cope like a normal person should. And what did I get for being a normal person for once? I got pushed. Pushed completely out. From my dads life, from my mums life, and worst of all, from my brothers. So tonight, I pushed. For my dad, for my brother - even for my mum. I pushed so hard, that my dad finally pushed back. With his hand, with his fist. And I was on the floor before I could even understand what was happening.

There was a scream. A strangers scream. 

My cheek throbbed, my ears ached, my eyes felt suddenly sore and hot. It was my mum who was screaming that strangers scream. She was at my side in a fuzzy flash of a white and blue dressing gown. But my cheek hurt. Really hurt. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much it hurt. It hurt so much that I couldn’t even push her off, when she held me, when she yelled and screamed. In fact - it must have been the pain- but I think I remember holding her back. Holding her how someone should hold their mum. But I wouldn’t know, because I wasn’t awake for much longer. My cheek hurt, my eye too - why do they hurt so much ? I felt tired and fragile and heavy and hot and like the lit end of a burning cigarette. 

So, I think I fell asleep in my mums arms. Because the next thing I remember is the hard scratchiness of my bed against my still aching face. And I cried, it hurt to cry, but I was so full of tears I had to. I wasn’t sad, though. I wasn’t sad much anymore. I was just confused. And the confusion hurt. The confusion hurt so much. But it made me think of Alfred. And that confused me more, so I cried more. 

Things were so different from how they used to be, when they used to be good. When I could wake up in the morning knowing what to expect, knowing what to prepare myself for. But now, everything was just a long blur of everything and emptiness and the pain ran into itself because it took no pauses anymore. The pain was a constant. It was at that point - as I held my throbbing cheek and cried myself into another sleep - that I realised that I hated my life. I hated it. And I hated everything about it. I hated my mum. I hated my dad. I hated school. I hated the people at school. I hated myself. 

But I didn’t hate him. I didn’t hate Alfred. He was a confusion in itself, I could accept that. But in a way, it made sense that he would be, because he was something new. Something that could become a new normal. So I think I stopped crying, just before I fell asleep. Maybe it was because I thought of him. Maybe it was because I stopped thinking of mum.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> awrite SO hey fellas, I actually had this ready and finished to post a couple days ago, but guess who got a bit heavy handed with the school doors and ended up breakin' their finger lmao :") 
> 
> but yooo I'm so glad I've finally gotten it published, I legit can't wait to see any feedback you guys may have, and I can't wait to get crackin' on with chapter 3 yooo
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading, I can't tell you fellas how grateful I am <3


	3. Cigarettes

“Why did you come to England?” 

“‘Cause it was kind of… Cause it was somewhere else.”

“Yeah. A lot of places are somewhere else, though. Why here? London? Must’ve been really far away.”

“That’s part of it.”

“What is?”

“Really far away.” As Alfred said this, there was something in the length and mist of his voice that suggested he was running the words through his head, thinking about all they could imply before saying them outloud. I watched him, feeling compelled towards the cigarette in his mouth, like an addiction had overcome me through just the mere suggestion of it. He would chew on it like he wanted to swallow it, and then poke it as far out as it would go and use it to speak through. Or behind. 

I’d noticed this because I’d unashamedly been watching him for a long time. All day long I’d been watching him, with not even a buzz inside of me telling me to look away or feel embarrassed. There was something about how different he was, how entirely he didn’t seem to care about anything or anyone, that made me feel as though I shouldn’t as well. Atleast, just when I was around him. He was like permission. Permission that always had the white end of cigarette hanging from his lips.

“Why do you smoke?”

He looked at me, something I’d noticed was rare for him. He hardly seemed to look at anything. It made me feel bold and like I was suddenly welted into place. 

“What sorta question’s that?” 

He plucked the cigarette from his lips, turned it, twisted it, stared at it and told it something with his eyes. For a long while, the silence stung me, and it wasn’t dulled when he continued talking. 

“The same reason as anybody, y’know? I’m addicted, I guess.”

“No but-“ _stop talking, Arthur._ “What made you start? Why’d you start?”

“Huh.” He said, interested. He wasn’t looking at me anymore, but instead straight down at his cigarette. “Never… well, never thought about it. That’s funny, huh? Never really…”

“Well like, when was the first time?”

“Ages ago. Five , I guess.”

“Five years ago?”

“No. Five years old.”

I halted for a moment, uncomfortable. Unsure. All I could think to do was repeat his answer. And then again.

“Yeah. Hah. Feels weird to say it outloud. Uhm, I… Yeah. That wasn’t when I started smoking, though. Just when I had my first couple cigarettes. When I started smoking I was… it was maybe… well, I think I’d just arrived here. So 2 years ago.”

“What made you start?” I was asking softly, afraid I’d say the wrong thing. It was true that he made me feel as though I could stop caring about everyone, but truthfully it was everyone but him. I always wondered why he was such an exception in everything.

He laughed, dismissively.

“Long story.”

“I can stay here as long as I like.” I said that more for me than for him. It made me feel good. I choose what I do. I control who I am. I control who I’m around. The only thing I couldn’t seem to control was myself. Myself and my family. But I forgot about them in the moments I spent with Alfred, anyway.

“Well…”

“Tell me. I promise I won’t judge or anything.”

“Oh,” he jolted back defensively, like a spurred horse on a reign. “I wasn’t worried about that. I don’t care about that.” 

“Then tell me.”

“Ahh. You won’t understand.”

“I might.”

“It’s weird. You won’t.”

“But I might.”

“No honestly, Arthur-“

“It’s a question. For the interview.”

He frowned. 

“Interview?”

“For the presentation. Yeah.” Even if I had just decided that at that very moment.

He didn’t say anything, so I pushed on. 

“Yeah, uhm. So I’m going to have to ask again, whether you answer it now or not.”

This, for a reason unbeknownst to me (as always was the case with Alfred,) made him smile. Then he moved closer to me, his head buried deep into his coat collar, hands curled into a ball on his lap. He looked delicate closer up, especially when I looked past all the threadbare fabric and London stained skin. It was one of the few times I was reminded that he was my age, and not a wandering and ancient traveller that I had happened to bump into in the middle of a forest. He was just a hurt, homeless boy. Exactly like me, and exactly not. And so, so delicate. 

We looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, and I felt as if I was staring inwards. Then he bent a hand, lifted an arm. Straight for me, moving straight for my head, fingers bent as though he was about to grab it. I felt cold, odd, like I was in the middle of a hurricane. I waited for the touch of his hand, almost eagerly, almost. And I also almost flinched away, as though he had been throwing a curled fist at me.There was that utterly confused feeling again. I waited a bustling second, but the connection was never made, and once my eyes had stopped, stilled and had begun to look outside instead of inside, I noticed - with what felt like a cold reel of reality - that he was pointing at something. Something just past my shoulder. His hand so close to my cheek.

I took a deep breath, just to breath. I hadn’t been breathing. And then I twisted around, following his eyeline. 

I was almost surprised to see the rest of the city around me. A place outside the protective bubble I felt when I was with him. In fact, It shocked me so much that I forgot why I had turned around in the first place. My mind must have gone dark after that, because it felt like a while of nothing until Alfred asked flatly - “do you see it?”

“Oh. See what?” I said. In truth, I saw many things. A scraggly woman with grey hair and laced up brown boots, tearing with a copper coin at a scratch card. A man, far taller and more brooding than her, leering over her shoulder and squeezing her arm tightly. Beside the pair was a small dog, black and uncut, obviously not belonging to them or to anyone. It scampered when the man ripped the scratchcard from the woman. Scampered straight towards a black corner that twisted onto a corridor of slim shops with small windows and pretty painted signs. It disappeared inside an old pub that sat on the corner ledge, brown and worn down and full of quiet, suited men on their late lunch break. Once a quick and snappy commotion had been caused, it ran back out again, a tea-towel whipping at it’s backside and spurring it along and back into the cathedrals streets. It looked left, right, left, tripped over itself and then began a slow walk back to where it had taken off from. On it’s way it passed a gaggle of shrieking girls in big green coats and white trainers, then two men with black puffer jackets shaking hands briefly, money and something else passing between them, and finally that Chinese man that Alfred had pointed out had been here everyday for a week, sometimes with his children, sometimes not. 

“That letter box.” Alfred answered, and I could hardly remember what I'd asked. 

“Oh what— can I see a letter box?”

“Yeah. That one, just there. They’re bright red, you must see it.”

“Uhm, uh— yeah, oh yeah. The big one, with the two slots.”

“Ahuh. And you see that shop? Just behind it?”

“ ‘ _Gary’s Corner’?_ That one?”

“That’s where I get’em from. My cigarettes.”

“Oh.”

“You know what else they sell there? Other’n smokes?”

“Well, a lot I suppose.”

“Stamps.”

My neck hurt from looking around and I felt lost in what Alfred meant. It began to tire me. Not in a bored sort of way, but in an utterly, physically straining way “Oh,”

“That’s how it started,” he said. Then stopped with words in his mouth. I waited. His brow flinched, and his eyes coward underneath them. Then, with a new and stonelike strength in his raised arm, he began.

“Every week, I go in there. I beg, and people give me money, and I go in there every single week without fail. And I walk past that letter box with the double slots, I walk through the door, I walk past the lottery card stand, past the sandwiches, the penny sweet boxes, the chocolates, the weird hairbrush basket they have in there — and even past the counter where the cigarettes are hid behind — I walk straight and straight until I reach the back and then I stand forever and ever, just looking at the packets of stamps. And I have the money in my hand, just enough of it. And I feel an ache; in my wrist, my hand, my fingers. I could grab those stamps, and the paper next to them, and I could write to him. I could write everything to him, everything that’s ever happened to me, every reason I hate him, every reason why he’s the one that’s ruined me like this. I could tell him how much I hate him, how much I wish he were dead. I were dead. And then I could post it all to him, just like that.” he blew out smoke from the corner of his mouth. “But I can’t.” 

He plucked the cigarette defeatedly from his lips. “And to stop myself from spending this money on stamps, I bought cigarettes instead. Then I got addicted, and now I’m here. A cigarette smoking waste of life.” He shrugged, as though it was all just part of the script. It hurt me in an odd and interior way. 

“I don’t think you’re a waste of life.” I said, the only thing I could think to say.

“You don’t know me.” 

“I don’t need to. You’re something to someone. To me. That means you can’t be a waste.”

He flicked his cigarette bud and trod on it, twisting it harshly into ash.

“Well,” there was something, gratitude, in his tone.

“Yeah.”

We were silent, a weaved silence full of a lot that wanted to be silent no longer. But neither of us spoke. Because it was one of those silences that happen because silence is needed, and we dared not to interrupt the process of whatever was happening, and whatever it would come to be. I knew he felt the same way, and he probably realised it a lot sooner than I did, that there was something in the way of a friendship that was blooming. Friendship and more, something very close. I was always naïve, not in denial, but in ignorance.

He stood up, and I felt cold.

“I’d better be off.”

“What? Why? Why all of the sudden?”

He shrugged. 

“Out of cigarettes,” he said.

I offered to wait while he went and fetched some more, but he waved a hand at me and told me there was no point, that he’d see me tomorrow. I withdrew, not bothering to see him walk off this time, feeling all but like the cigarette bud still crushed on the floor. 

And his hand had been so close to my cheek, hadn’t it?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im BACK hello again fellas, i hope you've all had a WONDERFUL chrimbo and that you'll be able to kick start the new year in a smashin' way <3
> 
> Thank you SO much for reading, the next chapter shouldn't be too long because having unhealthy amounts of the spare time over the holidays means I've already written a phat chunk of it c;
> 
> Thank you for the reviews so far, they are where its AT chief 
> 
> Hope to see ya back for the next chapter, I've finally got the plot somewhat measured out so it should pick up a bit from here on c;


	4. Feeling

“Shit. Did you bring an umbrella?”

I plucked at my coats hood in response, unrolling it up and over my head, hearing the loud drum beat of ‘pit pit’ beginning to hit it. I shook my now-covered head and Alfred squinted up at the sky in response, frowning and searching for something. 

“It’s gonna get bad.” He said. 

“Let’s go inside,” I prompted, noticing the unease in his tense neck, stretched upwards towards the sky as though pulled away by the smoke-grey clouds. 

“I want it to be private,” Alfred moaned, then stiller at the end, “you know, for the interview.”

In a moment of habitual forgetfulness, I almost invited myself over to a house that Alfred didn’t own. I caught it just in time, remembering it like a sharp pain in my side. It was something I always found myself doing, with Alfred and not with Alfred. The thoughtlessness was just who I was, I was sure. And up until this chapter in my life, it’s worst trait would be leaving me with untied shoe laces.

“Sorry,” I said light-heartedly, “maybe I’ll just go home and we’ll do it tomorrow or something.”

He said ‘no’ so quickly that it latched itself onto the end of my own sentence, and it took me a moment to realise that it was him (and not myself) that was the speaker, let alone that he was - in a way - asking me to stay. The rain felt warm.

“No—“ he carried on, his leg bouncing along with some sort of silent debate happening behind his eyes. He wasn’t looking at me. “No, no. You’ll...damn...uhm…” he glanced at me withdrawedly, eyes caught beneath two hooking eyebrows in a conflicted frown. He rested into that loaded expression, keeping it’s odd anonymity trained all onto me for a long, off-kiltered second.

“Fuck it.” He said decidedly, heavy face moulding from conflict into determination. “Come on. Come with me. Follow me.” And just like that, his rain-wet hand was holding mine, pulling me onwards smoothly as though we were sledding through the pavement puddles.

“Where are we going?” I asked, a mild curiosity brimming from how suddenly and independently he had made whatever decision it was he was battling so hard with moments prior. And all because of a bit of rain, I had thought.

“Somewhere that you, like, literally cannot tell anyone about. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

“Sure.”

He lead me down thin alleys and roads and streets that curved round the little buildings like a chartered belt, and split off into a venation of smaller and less attractive alleys and roads and streets. Then suddenly, like arriving at the junction between the inner city and the outcrops of the countryside, we hit a patch of grass. It was shaped like a chewed up loveheart, so dodgy looking that it’s barren and barred off image has stuck with me throughout the years. he pulled me into a dark little concave beside it that led into almost pitch black darkness and teetered off into a worn stone staircase. Once we had descended that carefully, and after I had cursed myself for once again not making sure my shoes were properly laced up, he began to bang his fist against the walls of the small tunnel. It was such a small space, and so tightly closed around him that in knocking his fists as he was— he reminded me of a caged ape or a trapped prisoner. 

I realised, in between all this excitement and trust and confusion, that I was scared. Very scared. Because I didn’t know him. Not really. He could have been anyone, and if there was one thing I knew about him, it was that he _was_ anyone. He was everything and anything and nothing at all because I had just blindly trusted him and simultaneously realised I couldn’t trust myself. How long had I known him? A week? No. Less than that. Less than I had known anyone. All he was was preconceptions and ideas in my head. He was what I wanted him to be. Trustworthy. But now lost and alone, and with time to think as Alfred searched for something just outside of a narrowly gated off underground cellar, I realised how stupid I was. 

Something dropped and clattered against the paved floor, and Alfred fetched it and held it up to the light funnelling in from where we had entered. A small, rusted key. I couldn’t breath. Pure fear. Fear from knowing nothing. But not just fear, as much as I would have liked to believe it was. There was another feeling, a daring feeling that erupted and jostled with the fear until they were both ravenously indecipherable from eachother. Excitement. 

Alfred took my wrist, held it tight, and began to unlock the gate. It swung open and creaked loudly, opening into a dark, cellared room that I hadn’t dared to even peer into moments earlier, but were now taking guided steps into with blind trust. It felt like taking steps into a floatless space, and the air grew oddly muffled and warmer, which was not what I had expected at first glance. Puddles met me under foot, shallow and thick, mixed with the brown-ish residue on parts of the walls and floor. Alfred would try to pull me round those by my wrist like it was a horses reigned muzzle, and with a little echo of ‘watch yourself.”, sat me down under a shard of grey light still managing to slice in. After closing and locking the gate, he joined me. 

“You cool?” He asked, glazedly.

“Yeah. Nice to be out the rain, I s’pose.” I answered, reminding me of the raindrops still cool against his and my skin alike. I pulled my hood down, and was met with the clogging smell of damp.

“Yeah. That’s why I come down here. Not technically legal… but.” His sentence was unfinished but done. As bad as I was at reading between the lines, I could always fill his in. 

I felt him shrug.

He was sitting close to me, I realised closer than he had ever sat to me before. So close that had he leant his head on his bent knees, he may have been able to hear my pulse - my heart beat - quicker than I had ever known it to race. As this thought blistered into my mind, he began to do just that. His arms reached out, his hips swivelled to one side, and he lent down. He was trying to reach something, I guessed, and it was only when I felt a slight tug on my ankle, that I realised he was tying my shoelaces up. 

A horrible feeling came over me, stupidly over-reactive for the event that had caused it. But I was embarrassed, and embarrassment rarely visited me in moderation. I hid my face behind my coat sleeve, and looked at nothing as he finished the task. Only uttering a little ‘thanks, sorry.’ When he learnt back again. He patted my knee, and left his hand there for it to burn me.

“You’re gonna break your neck, one of these days,” he observed, smiling. I still couldn’t bring myself to look directly at him.

“That’s what my dad says.” 

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well he’s right.”

I wanted to say something sharp. Something like ‘that’d be a first.’ or ‘what’d he tell you’. Just something. Anything to make me forget how his hand was still achingly resting upon my knee, and making me feel almost not myself. I wanted to say something, so that my brain could forget how much my hand was twitching to touch his, rest upon it like it was something to keep protected, and then run my fingers in between his own so that he couldn’t get away. Wouldn’t want to get away. And- what the fuck, Arthur? What the fuck are you going on about? Are you forgetting to tie up your mind as well as your shoe laces now? Weirdo. Why would you think those things? Why am I thinking those things? Weirdo.

I nodded. 

“So. You still wanna interview me now, or…?” He offered.

“Oh, Yeah- Yeah, I, uhm, Yeah.” Fumbling, I glanced at his hand, and pulled out my phone. I’d saved all the questions I’d wanted to ask in my notes. Only 3 or 4, not very long. I hadn’t wanted to hassle him. Nor had I wanted to set him off again, like the photos had.

“So uhm, Alfred, Let’s start by, uhm, well… can you give me a brief sort of glimpse into your childhood? Maybe? I don’t know uhh… yeah, if you’d be alright with that?” The plan had been to go off script a bit and make everything fluid and heart aching and cinematically beautiful. It wasn’t working.

“Like a round up of my key moments?”

“Yeah. That sounds good.”

“It’s just, you made me think about it actually. My childhood.”

“I did? I made you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, when we were taking those pictures I sort of… well, it got me ‘membering. Just bits and pieces. Web threads, kind off. You made me remember first off how much I hated my piece of shit dad. He was a mother fucker, there’s not no n’other word for it.” Alfred’s voice had slipped into more a drawled American, as it tended to do in his most intense, fluctuated moments. It had happened only twice so far, during the many hours I had spent with him over the past few days, and I had to listen closely to pull out words from behind the merging syllables.

“Yeah, he was an asshole. Used to hit me, hit me, hit me till there was nothing left in him to hit no more. Jello shouldered, he used to call it. ‘I’m gonna lash you till I’m jello shouldered, Alfred,’ he’d say. For stupid shit, too. Like not cleaning up the dog shit, or forgetting to iron my Sunday shirts. He’d take off his belt, get me to sit in the tub, and whip me till I was bleedin’ and he was ‘jello shouldered.’ My maw too, she didn’t used to hit me, but she was sick. Real sick, like sorta—“ he looped his finger clockwise around his temple. “Y’know? In that way. And she would get really uh, paranoid, I think’s the word. Tell me people were coming up from the basement at night and moving her cups and plates. I remember- I remember I’d wake up and half the cupboards would be emptied into the freezer because she said the basement men won’t go in there because it’s too cold. Dad used to say it was me, putting shit in the freezer, ‘cos mom never could remember doing it, so guess what? I’d get whipped again. And again and again andagainandagainandagain. Till finally he caught maw doing it and whipped her too. Though, not never as bad as he’d do to me. As fucking shit faced messed up as it was, he cared for her. I had, loving parents, I guess you could say.” He laughed. I didn’t say anything, scared it would be the wrong thing.

He carried on.

“Yeah, fuck. So I was thinking about all that shit. Hope it answers your question enough.” He looked at me, and as though warning me gently said “I could go on, if you like.” 

I shook my head and felt like crying, but didn’t. All I could say was ‘fucking hell.’ 

“Yeah. Fucking hell. I guess.” He replied. His hand dropped from my knee, but I didn’t feel that relief that I was expecting. I felt a helplessness. A pity, I suppose I could call it. A feeling of guilt and selfishness. I may not have had a perfect life, but atleast I hadn’t had that. I felt weak, so weak. And with that weakness came his contrast. I rolled my body so that I could properly face him. No hiding.

“You’re the strongest person I know.” I said truthfully. 

“You’ve only known me, like, 4 days.”

“Well, not really.” I was telling myself as well as him. “Not really, because now I’ve technically known you since you were only young. You’ve shared with me what it was like to know you for years.” I hesitated. “I know I’m sounding weird right now. I can hear myself, trust. But I just, kind of wanted you to know that.”

He looked away, hiding from me as I had felt like doing from him. It was always these most heavy and raw moments that I would mess up. The thought that I might do just that with him loomed over me like death over life. But as with life and death, I had to keep looking at him, and face what may be the inevitable with as much solid confidence and trust as he unknowingly gave to me. He must have felt me staring at him, at least as much as I could feel him staring away from me, because he began to talk again.

“It wasn’t all bad” he said, in an attempt at what I guessed was him trying to tell me my pity was misplaced. “My brother, Matthew, would come to visit. I loved him. He’s the reason I’m here.”

I didn’t know if ‘here’ meant England or if it meant alive, his tone was nostalgic and far off, behind doors I could not enter yet, but knew existed. I let him continue with no interruptions. 

“When he’d come, I’d ask him when he’d take me back with him. He’d always say ‘soon’. ‘Soon’, like someone would say ‘see ya’ to a person they know they won’t see again for a while. He couldn’t ever promise me nothing, though I could see he wanted to. Matthew had grown up in that house years before I would have. He knew. And he hated it as much as I should’ve had I realised how bad it really was. He was desperate to take me with him, and I was desperate to leave.”

He was quiet, and when he spoke again, I knew he had omitted some of the story. For who’s sake, I didn’t know.

“He took me one night, without our parents knowing. Packed my case for me and told me to sit in the back of his car with my seatbelt on till he came down. I fell asleep ‘cos it was… well, it was a long night is all I’ll say, and when I woke up again, we were at the airport.”

“He flew you here?” I asked, maybe needlessly, but Alfred seemed to have lived a life so far out of reach of mine that I wouldn’t have found it hard to believe that he had travelled all the steps of the world before finally settling on those of Saint Pauls. 

He shook his head, and then changed his mind in a cross of actions and began to nod.

“Yes. But not yet. He took me to Canada first. That was where his girlfriend and him lived. They had an apartment in Ontario, he had a nice job, a nice life, and I was finally invited to be a part of it. His job moved them to England, so I came over too. We had a house, small but nice. In Norwich. It was the happiest I had ever been. We were like a family. A proper one, not fucked up like mine. He cooked and she cleaned and I turned sixteen and had the happiest birthday I’d ever had.” 

He looked at me again, and moved closer to me very carefully. 

“He was looking for schools for me when she got pregnant. It was fun at first. Exciting, like waiting for a new brother or sister. But then I did something she didn’t like. I… well, anyway. She turned hostile. Angry. Cold. I heard them fighting once. Yelling so loud I could hear them through my earphones. She called me a bad influence, called me all sort of shit. Said I shouldn’t be around their new child. She asked him to choose. He didn’t. Said he was going out to the pub for a bit. Told her to calm down. That night, I chose for him. If his choice wasn’t me to begin with, then it wouldn’t be me to end with. I packed, wrote a quick something on a post-it note. Something stupid like ‘now you don’t have to choose,’ or whatever and left.” He laughed. “Funny how the worst decisions are always the easiest to make.” 

He put his hand on my knee again. 

“I don’t regret it, though.” He said it quickly as though defending himself, but his tone was calm and neutral, which made me think it just must have been a decision he’d come to after thinking of it again and again and again.

Funny. Funny how right he was, and yet how little I knew it at the time. His knee fell against mine, and the side of his trainer was against my ankle. More mind consuming than both of these actions, was the hand still on my knee, growing tired and restless and falling down from the very top point of my bent leg towards my left thigh. That poor hand, I had thought, that had been through so much and yet still touched my stupid weak knee - soul -with such tenderness and sympathy. I felt the soft pricking of tears in my stomach, and like a fluid reflex between muscle and body, I began to cry. Cry for him. Cry for gratitude. Cry for happiness. Cry for the moment. Everything I hadn’t realised came pulsing through each tear and left me more and more full of uncertainty and unknowing. Each tear told me I shouldn’t be feeling this way, and yet each tear brought on a new wave of the feeling. A feeling I hadn’t yet acquainted myself with, and hadn’t known I would ever have to. A feeling for him.

I pushed all doubt away, and with some coaxing from him, put my arms around his torso, holding tight in a hope to feel some form of a warm human figure beneath all his layers of clothing. The indent of a waist, the bump of a chest, the rise and fall of a breathing stomach. I wanted to feel him in that moment, make sure he was real. Give myself to him so that I may feel as if I had helped him in some way. But still, I didn’t think it was pity that I had embraced him with, nor sorrow or sympathy. But instead that feeling, the one I didn’t and wouldn’t understand. But he must have sensed in some way. Because the next thing I knew, he had both his hands around my face, his fingers in my hair and his palms pressed against my rain damped ears. 

His thumbs traced against my bottom lip, and his fingers slipped beneath my chin, lifting my head up and away from his chest gently. He asked me something, something that I didn’t entirely hear because I didn’t entirely understand.

“Would you mind?”

I didn’t answer, having an idea but still unsure as to what I’d be answering to. At least that’s what I told myself. But I knew, I knew exactly what he was asking. And as his thumb pressed more firmly against my lip the heavier my cetainity weighed upon my nerves, and my heart beat heavier and my legs felt softer and my face dripped wetter. 

His thumb disappeared, replaced by his hovering lips. They grazed mine, asking the question again in a way I didn’t know how to decline. He kissed me, softly and sharply, almost like our lips were two acquaintances greeting each other. When I didn’t kiss him back, he stopped. Pulled back and tucked his lips between his teeth. Almost shyly. 

“I’d better be off.” I said. Echoing him from a day previous . Except he didn’t try and stop me like I had tried to stop him. He didn’t even acknowledge my leaving more than a small nod.

I couldn’t tell if it were rain or tears on my cheeks when I made it back home, nor if my lips tasted of London fumes or of cigarettes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Atleast 1 chapter a month is sort of a schedule huh,,
> 
> sdsdfhasdh I'm so glad i've found the time to publish this chapter, I love writing for you fellas it's literally one of my favourite things to do with the little spare time I have nowadays ahhh
> 
> I really hoped you liked this chapter lads and uhhhhHHhhHh let's hope I can get the next one out byyyyyy December 2031????
> 
> Thank ya for any reviews you decide to leave, and thank you for the reviews left so far, they've been scrumptious <3


	5. Lovely

I was back at school and I hadn’t seen Alfred for a week. I hadn’t exactly been avoiding him, I just hadn’t seen him. That was all there was to it. I’d say this to myself every time I’d get an odd aching in my gut, or a knocking thought at the back of my eyes. The hardest part about it all was acting as though nothing had happened. I got on with lessons as normal, finished tasks as I had planned, presented what information I had gathered for the presentation as formerly and confidently as I could, and finally, didn’t veer outside of the usual subject range that I’d ever usually talk about. The last time I’d even mentioned Alfred was when a girl with prickly-pear hair had put her hand up during my presentation and asked if I ‘think he has knits? Do you have knits now?’. I’d said ‘no.’ And then with an almost desire to keep talking about something I finally wanted to, I’d added ‘he told me he’d shower everyday. At the swimming pool. He never smelt, even. Not anymore than one of us.” 

Then I’d went home, sat on the couch with a can of Coke and turned on the telly. Blue peter flickered, paused, and choked out of the television speaker at a welcomingly loud volume . I’d always found it boring. I didn’t care about what some girl from Wales had turned her sheep pen into, and I definitely didn’t like arts or crafts or anything that would turn out differently every time I tried it no matter how long I practiced. And the smiling, all the smiling all the time with nothing to smile about. But I liked dogs, and I liked cats, and I liked something else on it that I hadn’t then realised I had liked. But today, I watched it for none of that. I was hiding, I think. Behind anything I could. Filling my empty house with a noise as loud as the one in my mind. 

I must have fallen asleep somewhere during the 4th rerun of ‘ _Keeping up Appearances’_ because the next thing I knew I was woken up by something I couldn’t remember being woken up by, and was left watching the white font credits roll down on the black tv screen in a post-nap daze. I’d closed my eyes again, hardly feeling as though they were open in the first place, happy in my first moments of peace when I heard the voice again. Or what I supposed was again.

“Arthur?” The question was posed touchingly, but with the refrain of a stranger approaching another stranger. It was my father.

“Arthur. Chops tonight, mate.”

“Dinner?” 

“Have it ready in an hour.” Was the affirmation. 

An actual dinner. And dad’s smiling. 

I didn’t say anything. Just nodded, like it was normal. I wanted it to feel normal. These few minutes had felt more normal than the last few years ever had, and I was basking in it. I stretched out, feeling like I was waking up after a 3 year long nap. It must have only been twenty minutes.

“I did my presentation today.” 

“Oh? How’d it go?”

 _Really well._ I’d wanted to say. _I only stammered twice and no one laughed at me and I didn’t feel like bashing my head on the wall once, I’d even remembered to do my shoelaces up before hand._ I’d also wanted to tell him all about Alfred, tell him everything I’d told everything else, and more. But I also didn’t. If I said too much, I could have ruined this delicate, glued down bit of normal. I’ve learnt to not introduce the present into an echo of the past, echos need their own space to wear out.

“Yeah. Uhm, well, don’t know yet.” 

“I’m sure you did lovely.” 

Lovely. 

A funny word choice. I tried to pick the word ‘love’ out from it, and play it back in my head with my dad’s voice. When was the last time I’d heard him say ‘love’ without the abrasion of tears to choke it back? A long time. 

“Yeah. Hopefully.” 

He was unpacking the contents of a tesco shopping bag, I watched him reveal the chops in their black plastic packaging, and then shove them somewhere behind the two milk bottles and stacks of tinned vegetables. 

“Have you told your friends about it yet?”

“My friends?” 

At that moment, I’d wished I had some. So the mention of their absence wouldn’t have felt so rigid and tough, it almost made dad drop a packet of pears. It didn’t actually, but I imagined it did. I imagined him seizing up, knuckles turning white and face darkening with blood as he remembered I’m a friendless nobody that isn’t worth the effort he made to appear happy today. 

He smiled at me, white cheeks folding against the grooves of wear and tear next to his eyes. I wanted him to know that it didn’t go unappreciated, but still, I couldn’t quite reciprocate. 

“You said you were going to talk to homeless people, in London, have you told them?”

I think he knew it was an odd question. Maybe he’d asked it just to have something to ask, maybe he was curious. Either way I was glad to be on the topic, as much as I had tried to avoid it throughout the entire day. It relieved me, somewhat.

“It was only one boy.”

“And have you told him?”

“Why would I tell him?”

“Was it about him?”

“Yeah.” 

Dad didn’t say anything more, I’d answered my own question. Why hadn’t I told Alfred? Because I hadn’t spoken to him. And I hadn’t planned on speaking to him. I hadn’t planned anything, I hadn’t thought any further than giving myself some time to think, and then taking away that time with mundane hobbies so I didn’t have to think.

I wondered if he’d planned on kissing me. 

I wondered if he’d regretted it. If he was thinking about it too, or if it was just another subversive thing in his very subversive life.

“I will.” I said. “At some point.”

Dad began to pull open the packet of pork chops with an equally porky finger. I turned back to a toilet paper advert on the telly, there was a little white Labrador puppy bouncing around in a cape of tissue next to a smiling family.

Normal. Without the chops. With the chops. Without the kiss. With the kiss. 

Lovely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3 months later and with a tiny arse chapter i wrote in my hours break from soul crushin' revision but here i AM lads and hopefully here to stay c; REALLY hope ya enjoy, and again, sorry it's tiny, not really tooooo into the fandom anymore and am a bit scrapped for time over the next week or so BUT i still love writin' for yous and writin' things like this, so Imma have a go at being ALOT more regular with my updates c;
> 
> that's what im sayin' anyway we'll see how it goes hgasgds
> 
> thank you SO MUCH for readin' and for followin' the story, means the absolute world to me <3 see ya soon (hopefully) in the next chapter c;

**Author's Note:**

> Helloooooo it's me back with another fic that my work schedule says is impossible, but my lil heart says ehh, when's that ever stopped me before ?? 
> 
> So yes, I hope yous enjoyed this first chapter as much as I'm looking forward to writing the next one c;
> 
> Reviews are literally appreciated so much, but I value every click and every read anyway, so thanks so much for takin' a look, even if you don't have the time to leave any feedback c:
> 
> See ya, cheerio <3
> 
> \- Lux


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